Vintage Toronto Ads: Seeing Santa at Yorkdale

Yorkdale wasn’t joking when it called itself “Canada’s Christmas Centre” in the early 1970s. Around 100,000 children per year perched themselves, either with excitement or with pure terror, onto the laps of the three Santas the mall employed. We imagine a few fading images taken during those brief visits survive in homes around the GTA.

Chief Santa John Horning was well acquainted with the hazards of the job: bruised knees, beard-tugging, and leaky bladders. After eight years on the job, he found that children weren’t greedy, but were “just victims of advertising.” He told the Don Mills Mirror that “every now and then a smart Alec asks for a million dollars, but to balance that a few ask for peace and happiness in the world.” Horning noted that while kids always offered to leave cookies, “I’d like to tell them to leave a shot of rye.”

Because heaven knows Santa needs a little fortification to cope with the stress of making all those deliveries on Christmas…

Additional material from the December 13, 1972 edition of the Don Mills Mirror.